Working with your customer's information
You don't need to record customer names to run Simple GMS but it's a lot easier dealing with people if you do know their name.
We appreciate that some names can be difficult to spell, that's why our customer self-service check-in application gives customers an opportunity to manage their own contact details.
Whether you store your customers' addresses or not is entirely up to you. It is nice to show an address on your invoices and gives you some valuable insight into where your customers are coming from.
You can store a landline number or a mobile number for your customers. We would recommend storing a mobile number if you can. That way we can send text message reminders and notifications to your customers. You can save a lot of time trying to call customers to tell them their work is finished by using the system to send a text instead.
Again, it's not essential to use the system but having a customer's email address makes things possible. You can send vehicle health checks (VHCs) and invoices by email doing your bit for the planet. You can also email customers in the future reminding them to book their car in to get their VHC and MOT advisories sorted out.
It's very difficult to run a garage business without any vehicle information! For each of the customer's vehicles we store:
Some of this data can only come from third parties like the DVSA and you'll need to use your credits to get that data. You can run Simple GMS without using any credits but it's easier when you do!
We store the details of every job you do for your customers as well as their invoices and payment receipt records.